


Damning with Faint Praise (the Saving Grace remix)

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-03-25
Updated: 2005-03-25
Packaged: 2017-10-11 23:28:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 73 days since Remus Lupin and Sirius Black arrived at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, carrying a very specific kind of baggage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Damning with Faint Praise (the Saving Grace remix)

**Author's Note:**

> Remixed from [Damning With Faint Praise](http://v.twinners.org/hp/praise.html) by deepsix.

"It's shocking," said the mirror, "the way you've let yourself go. I remember back when your mother was alive and you had those darling little black, velvet, knickerbocker suits, and oh how your hair was . . ."

"Oh do shut up, you miserable old bint," said Sirius with a snarl.

The mirror hmmpfed. "Charmed, I'm sure."

Sirius sighed. It had come to this: hurling bitter little insults at mirrors. Things were at a pretty pass when the only bit of control he exerted over his life was to threaten looking-glasses into silence. "Fucking house," he muttered.

It had been a bad morning – all thirty-seven minutes for which he'd been awake.

He'd been roused by his mother's shrieking, which this morning had run to the denigration of his fashion sense (as well as the usual comments about blood traitors, abominations, filth, and scum). There were many things Sirius considered unbearable about his miserable life, but being woken by a long-dead harpy who considered his trousers gauche was now top of the list. "What does she expect?" he asked the mirror.

The mirror made a noise of thorough disapproval. "Segues are _such_ a lost art," it huffed.

Sirius bared his teeth, and the mirror yelped. "I _bite_ ," he growled, and the mirror fell silent. Sirius felt almost certain it was giving him the finger in whatever mirror-way it could. "You win," he snapped, "don't you get it? You show me _this_ ," he jabbed a finger toward his own face, "so you bloody well _win_."

The mirror sniffed haughtily. "Pitiful."

He growled, unpleasantly. He hadn't always been skin and bone or in need a shave, and his hair hadn't always been so bloody tragic, and really, someone ought to pay for the squirrelly eyebrows he was sporting, someone ought to _pay_.

"Fucking house," he muttered again, as if the malevolent spirit of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place were responsible for his looks. He glanced around the dingy third-floor bathroom. The wooden floor beneath his bare feet was almost black with age. The ancient sink was stained with rust, and there were small, green lumps near the drain that made his stomach turn. Behind him, the taps of the claw-foot tub kept up a steady drip-drip-drip that was enough to drive a saner man to distraction.

Sirius narrowed his eyes at his reflection. He was going absolutely, bloody out of his mind.

"I'm a moth." He'd said to Remus after dinner the previous night, terribly pleased by the metaphor.

"A moth?" Remus had looked at him over the rim of his teacup. "Any particular kind?"

"The kind that's been trapped by a ruddy entomologist, and pinned to a fucking board while it's still alive."

"Really."

He'd leaned across the kitchen table. "Twitching."

"Not dead yet, then," Remus had said with cheer.

 _Not yet_ , Sirius had echoed, and flinched at the thought.

Sirius stared murderously at the ugly, gray sliver of soap that rested in the soap dish, exactly the same color as the bathroom's dingy tile. A draft was whistling in from some unknown quarter, brushing over his bare shoulders and making him shiver. He hated this house, hated it with a passion.

But it all might have been bearable if not for the dreams.

He'd forgotten the concept of dreaming in Azkaban, since fragile things couldn't live in that place. There wasn't _sleep_ in Azkaban, not meaningful sleep, just hazy periods of utter exhaustion and long, black stretches of unconsciousness fueled by pain.

It took time for his mind to allow him to dream again, but by now his dreams were wondrous things, loud and colorful and outrageously bright. Molly, Dumbledore, Remus – they'd all asked if he suffered from nightmares, and his answer had startled them – "the nightmare's fucking waking _up_." His dreams were a stunning, kaleidoscope whirl of all the memories he thought he'd lost. His waking hours were dull and cold, drab and taxing and viciously confined.

There were mornings when he'd wake with the sound of James' laughter in his ears, his shoulder warm from the pressure of James' hand. He'd turn his head to grin back at his best friend and see only the muted shadows of a house–turned-jail.

Sometimes he'd wake remembering Peter before the fall – pudding-faced and quietly clever, conjuring tiny, exotic dancers out of a packet of sugar mice to make Lily Evans blush. He'd remember _that_ Peter for a second, and forget the other, until the sharp, copper taste of betrayal would slam into his body, and anger would surge back through his veins.

But Remus – it was Remus he dreamed about most often. It was Remus he'd dreamed about the night before.

~  
Gryffindor tower. Sunlight. _Youth_.

"What are you doing?" asked Remus from the middle of the dorm room.

Sirius started with surprise, and dropped his hand to his lap. _Shit_ , he thought viciously. _Wouldn't you know it, Remus bloody Lupin_. He stared at the hand he'd just been snogging. The universe hated him. Hated him and considered him its ball of yarn.

"Er," he managed. Remus just stared. "What does it look like?"

~

Sirius smiled a little, raising his head to look back at his reflection. He'd kissed Remus Lupin for the first time on a spectacularly ordinary Sunday afternoon, possessed by a glorious madness he'd never fully understood. Seventy-three inexplicable days had passed after that kiss, in which Remus made no move to throw him down and demand there be more bloody snogging.

Baffling man. Baffling _boy_.

He'd been convinced he was crap, and Remus couldn't stand him. He'd been practicing techniques for better snogging when Remus had walked in.

~

Sirius could feel himself blushing, and stared at his fingers. "Why'd you never kiss me again, after that time?"

He felt Remus stiffen against him, could all but the hear the cogs spinning in his brain. "I didn't –" Remus ran out of breath, as if something had surprised him. "I didn't know you wanted me to."

"Oh." _How could he think that?_ "So it wasn't – it wasn't because I'm a bad kisser?"

Remus laughed ( _oh god, I am, I am, I suck at kissing, that's what it is, he's laughing at me_ ). "You aren't a bad kisser," he said with a smile.

~

They'd kissed after that. If Sirius pressed a hand to his lips he could still remember the boy-warm, ink-dirt, crimson taste of Remus' mouth.

He dropped his hand and grimaced at the mirror. Second kisses were still a problem between them, and it was about bloody time he stopped saving his living for the hours when he slept.

Newly determined, he bared his teeth at the now sullen looking-glass, turning his head from side to side to examine the effect. They were whole now, his teeth – charmed back to whiteness, cavities fixed and rot spelled away. He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. He waggled it wildly before licking his hand. He smelled his damp palm – nothing there but peppermint – and smiled at his reflection before baring his teeth again.

"What are you doing?"

Sirius spun to see Remus leaning against the door. "Checking," he said, chin lifted in defiance.

"Checking?" Remus smiled at him with the lazy grace he seemed to have perfected while Sirius had been gone. Fucking bastard. _Grace_. His own eyebrows were trying to escape from his forehead and Remus Lupin had perfected _grace_. "Checking what?"

Sirius summoned his most aristocratic bearing. "M'teeth."

Remus frowned a little, crossing his arms across his chest. "We cast the spells weeks ago. Are you worried they'll fail?"

"No." Sirius turned back to the mirror and flashed a smile. Bizarre-looking thing. "I was just . . . checking." He shifted so that he could see Remus' reflection, saw the lift of his brow.

"Checking for what?"

Sirius sighed, and his shoulders slumped. "I had a dream last night. A new one." He laughed mirthlessly. "Well, an old one in . . ." He growled as he looked back at himself. Bloody _words_.

Remus crossed to the toilet, closed the lid, and sat down. He squeezed Sirius' elbow then let his hand fall. "What did you dream?"

"Of us." Sirius turned to sit on the edge of the bathtub, the porcelain cold through his pajama bottoms. "The second time we ever kissed."

Remus looked surprised. "Second time? I remember the first . . ."

"You smelled of turnips," said Sirius, airily.

"Turnips?"

"Yes."

"When?"

Sirius sighed with exasperation. "Before our first _kiss_."

" _Turnips_?"

"It was comforting." This was terribly lovely, but _so far from the point_.

"I smelled of turnips?"

"It was a _good_ smell. It made me ask if I could kiss you."

Remus rubbed his thumb over his bottom lip. "You are the strangest man alive. You never told me I smelled of _turnips_. Or that turnips would make you . . ." He spluttered. "Do _that_."

He still had it in him to fluster Remus Lupin. By god, that felt good. "I didn't think you'd appreciate the vegetable comparison and besides, that's not the point. The point is . . ."

". . . You dreamed of our second kiss."

Sirius nodded. "It's been seventy-six days since I came to find you, you know."

Remus looked slightly dazed at the way the conversation was jumping about. "Has it really?" Remus looked off toward the bathroom cabinet, an ugly monstrosity in cherry and wrought iron that seemed to cling to the wall out of sheer, reckless spite. "I suppose it must be by now."

"I counted."

"Seventy-six days." Remus shook his head in wonder. "Amazing how . . ."

"Seventy- _three_ days since we kissed," Sirius said.

Remus raised his eyebrows. "Oh."

"I woke up this morning and I wondered why second kisses have always been so hard for us." Sirius cleared his throat, because he bloody well wasn't going to get _hoarse_ or something now. "And I know I'm no catch, and it's far from a picnic being locked up with me inside this mausoleum, but . . . well those are things I can't change, and I don't think you'd hold that against me. So I thought I'd try to find the reason in more mundane things." He bared his teeth. "Maybe my teeth." He waggled his tongue. "Maybe my tongue. Maybe even my breath."

Remus looked stricken. "No, Padfoot, no . . . "

"If it's not those things – and I checked, they seem fine, unless you're not a fan of peppermint, but you always _were_ . . . well then either you don't want to kiss me, or we're both a pair of gormless gits who might _look_ a lot older, but still act like we're seventeen." He straightened his shoulders. "So which is it?"

"I didn't think you wanted me to kiss you," said Remus, stunned into honesty.

Sirius stared at him as if he'd lost his mind. Remus had dropped his head to study his hands, shoulders bowed as he picked at a fingernail. His shirt was so well-worn Sirius could see the shadow of his shoulder-blades beneath it, and his hair was threaded with _so much gray_. He looked terribly sad.

"Gormless gits, then."

Remus threw him a look of profound irritation. "Sirius, it's been ceaseless madness for over a year. Me, showing up at that blasted cave, asking 'how've you been?' as if you'd just come back from a holiday, as if you'd had rum in your back pocket and were excited about some percussion instrument you'd bought at a street market for four times its worth because you liked the bloody _color_."

He took a breath.

"And then my house – the only unhurried moment we had before coming here, and _three days of it_ at that. And that night, the night we left I . . ." He ran a distracted hand through his hair. "I couldn't help it, it was everything, _everything_ , to finally have you with me and _god_ how I wanted some of the old us back. I thought if I didn't try, right then, we might never . . . " He sighed. "I kissed you and I _liked_ it but Padfoot." He slammed his hand on the edge of the sink. "We're not those boys, and I shouldn't presume . . . "

"Could've fucking just asked, you passive-aggressive bastard."

That seemed to take the wind out of Remus' sails. "What?"

"Hello Sirius, fancy a snog?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Hello Remus, _yes I bloody well do_."

"Padfoot!"

Sirius almost laughed at Remus' annoyance. "Not saying what we were thinking didn't work out so well for us before, now did it?" he asked, spreading his arms. "Why are we still doing exactly the same thing?"

Remus blanched. "Stop," he said, softly.

"I bloody will not." Sirius stood up, paced forward two steps and back again. "Second kiss, Remus, that's the thing! Not any of that other claptrap, not _any_ of it. I will not consent to live by sleeping, you hear me?"

"Live by . . ." Remus looked confused. "What on earth?"

"Plain fact is, you _wanted_ to kiss me again and you didn't because you had some hair-brained idea that I wouldn't want to, and I wanted to kiss you and didn't know how to bring it up. That shit has to _stop_."

"Sirius!" Remus yelled so infrequently that Sirius flinched at the tone of his voice and outright stared. There was a long, awkward pause. "You started leaching away the moment we got here," Remus said, very quietly, staring at him with wild, bright eyes. "You turned brittle beneath my hands. I could hear how angry you were even when you didn't say a word."

Sirius sighed, and dropped to his knees between Remus' legs. "So you were a big girlie scaredy-cat, is that it?" He shrugged. "Me too."

Remus twitched with surprise, and huffed disbelieving laughter into Sirius' face. "Well, that's one way of looking at it."

"I dreamed last night 'bout our first second kiss," said Sirius, reaching up to trace a finger down Remus' jaw. "I remember it so clearly -- fear thrumming under my fingertips – such a _child's_ fear, that I'd screwed it all up and you didn't want me." He took Remus' face between both his hands. "And I woke to the same feeling, although without the desire to suck on my hand and check that I knew what I was doing."

Remus laughed, and leaned in toward him. "You think you know what you're doing now?" he asked. He rested a hand on Sirius' arm, and Sirius could feel him trembling.

Sirius quirked an eyebrow. "How 'bout we find out?" he whispered. "It's about time we both started living again."


End file.
